Report: Fujita will deny existence of bounty program in Goodell meeting

Here’s the primary issue, which continues to be largely ignored or misunderstood. No one has disputed that the Saints had a pay-for-performance system. And it appears that the pay-for-performance system included payment for clean, legal hits that prevented opponents from continuing.

The league has at times tiptoed around the question of whether giving guys a little walking-around money to do something they already have an incentive to do merits stiff punishment of the players involved. The players have insisted that there never was a payment offered for deliberately inflicting injury — and, technically, there wasn’t. But the system also may have resulted in a technical violation of rules, based on how the league defines the term “bounty.”

The real factual dispute comes from whether there were specific bounties placed on specific players. The NFL claims that Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma offered $10,000 to anyone who knocked Kurt Warner out of the 2009 NFC divisional playoff game and $10,000 to anyone who knocked Brett Favre out of the 2009 NFC title game. Vilma denies it, strongly.